by Francis Friel

Ladislas Starevich is my favorite animator. The Mascot is my earliest stop-motion memory along with that goof Gumby, both of which used to run as part of the Saturday morning lineup when I was a little kid. It was one of a bunch of shorts that used to run as part of the lead-in to Star Stuff, a locally-produced (in early-80s Philly) sci-fi series about a little boy on Earth whose best friend is a little girl living in outer space (and, somehow, in the future). They’d watch Laurel & Hardy movies together and sometimes cartoons, so I’d always lump Laurel & Hardy and Gumby and The Mascot together in my head, along with another cartoon called Prest-O Change-O (featuring an early appearance of the character that would later evolve into Bugs Bunny). Weird, surreal stuff to be playing at 6am for children. I’d had such fond memories of these bizarre little cartoons and it was shocking when, in my early 20s, I re-discovered them and found that they were actually well known films by important directors. So I looked up more work by Starevich and his stop-motion descendants Jan Svankmajer and The Brothers Quay.